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Lightning strikes twice with return

If you’re one of those rare people who has been following the Final Fantasy XIII saga throughout its entirety, then you’ll be glad to hear that Square Enix has just dropped a large chunk of knowledge about the next instalment.

I describe the series’ followers as rare because opinion tends to be divided on FFXIII.

While most traditional fans of the franchise preferred XIII-2, which got rid of relatively boring do-gooder Lightning and replaced her with her little sister, a spiky-headed generic RPG kid and whatever flesh-devouring monster you wanted to aid you in your quest. It was a good move.

The second sequel to FFXIII, entitled Lightning Returns, revolves around the 13 days prior to the end of the world in an apparently unintentional Majora’s Mask tribute.

“We did hear Majora’s Mask come up a lot,” game director Motomu Toriyama told Venturebeat.com. “Actually, though, the dev team – a lot of them haven’t played that game. They don’t see very much of a relation.”

Instead the time system is based on the doomsday clock, the symbol for how long we have until the end is nigh based on how much danger the human race is placed in at the time.

It’s currently set at five minutes to midnight, so if we’re lucky we might have time to get a round in.

Another big change for the series is that instead of controlling a team of players, for the most part this game will consist of just Lightning, but Toriyama says it is possible more playable characters will become available.

“In terms of changing the battle system from having a party to just having one person fighting, it was definitely a challenge trying to express the flair and the visual aesthetics of having a three-person party while switching over to just Lightning fighting.

"I also wanted to mentioned that, of course, the main playable character is Lightning, but in some side quests, we’re considering having people accompany you in those battles.”